A behind the scenes look at film and television Prop making peppered with everything else creative we do!

When I lent my services to a collegue who was working on a film about 12 years ago, I was introduced to the world of cnc. I remember watching this huge machining centre milling out a slab of mdf and turning it into a fantastic set of gears. I knew that it would have taken me hours to achieve the same thing with traditional power tools. I decided then that I would invest in a cnc router for my own business Oxenham Design. At that time I could turn on a computer, but even to check email seemed like a crazy set of operations. I persevered and learned every piece of relevant software I could get my hands on. I am now fortunate enough to be using Vectric's ASPIREsoftware, and Techno cnc routers, which has helped us to create some amazing projects, both in part, or in full. I thought that this blog would be a great place to share "behind the scenes" adventures with the software, materials and equipment we use, as well as the projects we build.

Monday, 7 October 2013

Preparing for the Final Descent!

All of the plane seats framework was to be a silver powder-coated look. John took all the pieces outside to take advantage of the suns amazing drying capabilities! The framework got sprayed with the awesome hiding capabilities of a rubberized textured automotive undercoating. A couple of coat's completely hid the sketchy edges of the plywood.

Once the textured coating had thoroughly dried, they all got sprayed in a bright silver metallic color. I sprayed the vacuum formed armrest caps out in a darker charcoal metallic. It was enough of a contrast to make them readable, but not garish!

The upholstery work was very slow to start! I must have redone the first piece a bunch of times before I found a successful way to get the fabric perfect. Once that was done, the rest took time, but was WAAY less frustrating :)

I did each piece of the fabric all the way through, one at a time. It became apparent, early on, that in order to not forget how I did each piece, I would do the same piece for each seat, then move to the next one.

We had to paint the chair frames after the upholstery work was finished on the backs. It was kind of a chicken or egg thing, but that's the way it worked out.

The final seats looked great! A lot more comfortable than last years trip to Mexico, that's for sure!

The large X's were next on the list. I drew all the vectors, and measured the miter for each side piece.
I went with red pvc, so I wouldn't have to do any painting on these. Plus it won't be noticeable if they get dinged during the shoot. Our Techno cut all the fronts, backs and sides for them.
The side pieces all got mitered on our custom mitering jig that uses a small laminate trimmer to route the edges to the desired angle.

I cut the faces of the X's .250" larger than the final size. I scribed the offset all the way around the X, and lined the sides up to the scribe. This would hide any small errors that can compound.

When the front and back get routed with a flush cutter, it will almost be seamless.

The final X's look great sitting on the seats!

A last minute finalized request was 4 seat belt buckles. I had to think fast how to build these, as we had no time to 3d model and machine anything. I downloaded a pretty clean image of a seat buckle, and knowing the dimensions of the webbing we'd be using, scaled the buckle to the appropriate size. It was basically two pieces of brushed Dibond, sandwiching a piece of 3/4" black pvc. I'm not sure that they'll actually end up seeing these at all, but at least they're there!

We got the seats to the studio, and all set up for the pre-light. We made the heights of the front row of seat-backs adjustable. This will give them the most amount of flexibility when they start shooting.
I pretty much went straight to bed when we got home, and slept really well!
Which is good, because the next project is another 7 foot tall cartoon shark!

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About Me

Jamie is the owner of Oxenham Design, a full service props and miniatures company. Jamie designs/ builds for the film, television and advertising industry, as well as creates highly creative 'over the top' dimensional signage.
Running the company for over 10 years with his wife and partner Jody, they are fortunate to work on exciting and creative projects.
For more information you can find Jamie on Facebook, visit the website www.oxenhamdesign.com or follow his blog.